How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Part.Paragraph)
Quote #10
The Savage shook his head. "Listen to this," was his answer; and unlocking the drawer in which he kept his mouse-eaten book, he opened and read:
Let the bird of loudest lay
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be…
Helmholtz listened with a growing excitement. At "sole Arabian tree" he started; at "thou shrieking harbinger" he smiled with sudden pleasure; at "every fowl of tyrant wing" the blood rushed up into his cheeks; but at "defunctive music" he turned pale and trembled with an unprecedented emotion. The Savage read on (12.65-7)
For Helmholtz, Shakespeare isn't just about the language—it's about the subject matter. As he said earlier, one can only write piercingly if one is writing about things that matter. He recognizes from this passage that the text is doing just that—it's writing about passion, danger, and emotion.
Quote #11
O sweet my mother, cast me not away:
Delay this marriage for a month, a week;
Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies…
When Juliet said this, Helmholtz broke out in an explosion of uncontrollable guffawing.
The mother and father (grotesque obscenity) forcing the daughter to have some one she didn't want! And the idiotic girl not saying that she was having some one else whom (for the moment, at any rate) she preferred! In its smutty absurdity the situation was irresistibly comical. He had managed, with a heroic effort, to hold down the mounting pressure of his hilarity; but "sweet mother" (in the Savage's tremulous tone of anguish) and the reference to Tybalt lying dead, but evidently uncremated and wasting his phosphorus on a dim monument, were too much for him. He laughed and laughed till the tears streamed down his face—quenchlessly laughed. (12.72-4)
As unique as Helmholtz is, Huxley doesn't let us forget that he, too, is a product of the World State's conditioning. One of the tensions we see as his character evolves is the question of whether or not he will be able to overcome this limitation.
Quote #12
"And yet," said Helmholtz when, having recovered breath enough to apologize, he had mollified the Savage into listening to his explanations, "I know quite well that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like that; one can't write really well about anything else. Why was that old fellow such a marvellous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about. You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases. But fathers and mothers!" He shook his head. "You can't expect me to keep a straight face about fathers and mothers. And who's going to get excited about a boy having a girl or not having her?" (The Savage winced; but Helmholtz, who was staring pensively at the floor, saw nothing.) "No." he concluded, with a sigh, "it won't do. We need some other kind of madness and violence. But what? What? Where can one find it?" He was silent; then, shaking his head, "I don't know," he said at last, "I don't know." (12.75)
In this passage, it seems as though Helmholtz's position is an impossible one. He wants to write about something passionate, but all the big issues (sex, lust, jealousy, family, love) are inaccessible to him. He suspects there's something else to write about—some other passion that he could understand—when in fact his society has engineered him to find all passions smutty or ridiculous.